Tax Law

A conference committee has been merging the tax bills that were passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate, and even though we could still see some minor changes, it looks like the major parameters of the final bill have now been agreed upon. The final bill will be known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and we are being told that it will be one of the largest tax cuts in U.S. history. Unfortunately, the impact on our tax bills will be relatively minor, but at least it is a step in the right direction. The following summary of the major provisions in the final bill comes from AOL…

A less generous corporate rate cut: Republicans may cut the corporate rate to 21% from the current federal rate of 35%, instead of the 20% proposed in both the house and Senate bills. The new rate would start in 2018.

A lower top individual tax rate: The top individual bracket would drop to 37% instead of the 38.5% proposed in the Senate bill. It would still be down from the current 39.6%.

Keep the estate tax, but raise the threshold to qualify: Instead of phasing out the estate tax over time, like the House bill, the compromise bill would instead simply increase the threshold for an estate to qualify — from $5.6 million to around $11 million. That aligns with the Senate bill.

The reduction in the corporate tax rate is probably the most important provision in this tax overhaul package. For decades, the United States has had a much higher corporate tax rate than much of the rest of the world, and this has given large corporations an incentive to locate operations elsewhere. By making the corporate tax rate more competitive with everyone else around the globe, it is hoped that this will mean more good jobs for American workers.

This bill also reduces individual tax rates, but not by that much. So you will notice a reduction in your tax bill, but don’t expect anything “game changing” in nature.

In addition, this bill will eliminate the Obamacare individual mandate. This is something that should have been done back in January, and I am very happy that Congress is finally getting it done.

It is anticipated that both the House and the Senate will vote on the final version of this tax bill next week.

Sadly, it is not a slam dunk that this bill will actually get through the Senate.

Senator Bob Corker voted against the original Senate bill, and he may vote against this version too.

Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Susan Collins of Maine have also expressed reservations about this bill, and it is unclear how they will vote at this point.

And let us not forget that Senator John McCain’s health is rapidly failing. Hopefully he would be present for any vote, but there is no guarantee that will happen.

In the end, Republicans can only lose two votes in the Senate, and so this is going to come down to the wire.

“Our tax cuts will break down — and they’ll break it down fast — all forms of government and all forms of government barriers and breathe new life into the American economy,” Trump said.

“They will unleash the American people, they will tear down the constraints on discovery, innovation and creation, and they will restore the hopes and dreams of the American family. Millions of middle class families will win under our plan.”

Of course even if this bill passes, our tax code will still be a complete and utter nightmare.

The tax code will still be over two million words, and the regulations will still be more than seven million words. Our system will still greatly favor those that can hire accountants and tax attorneys to find every conceivable loophole possible, and it will still be a tremendous burden on the middle class.

If I am elected to Congress, I am going to fight to completely abolish the IRS and the income tax. As I travel around Idaho and speak to groups, many are extremely receptive to these proposals, but they wonder how we would fund the government without an income tax.

Well, the truth is that the individual income tax only accounts for about 46 percent of all federal revenue, so we could definitely eliminate the individual income tax but we would also have to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government at the same time.

Of course the Democrats are not just going to roll over and allow us to cut the size of the federal government in half, so in the short-term we can focus on some other solutions. A flat tax or a fair tax would both be far superior to the system that we have today, and there are some very good proposals already out there that just need to be implemented.

I once spent an entire year studying our tax code, and I still shudder when I think about those 12 months. Our tax code is a complete and utter abomination, and while I applaud Congress for trying to “simplify” it, the truth is that this bill that is about to be passed won’t make that much of a difference.

We need to fundamentally change the way that we fund government in this nation, and that is why I want to completely abolish the income tax. The system that we have right now is simply not fixable, and we should not pretend that any “tax reform bill” is going to solve our problems.

Are you ready for mass chaos in Washington? There are lobbyists for just about every cause that you can possibly imagine, and they are always working hard to influence members of Congress on their particular issues. But when you are talking about a major tax reform bill, that is something that virtually every single lobbyist in the entire city will want to be involved in. Our tax code is over two million words long, and the regulations are over seven million words long, and any changes to our immensely complex system could have absolutely enormous implications. There will be winners and there will be losers with any piece of legislation, and lobbyists will zealously fight to defend the turf belonging to their particular clients. Often lobbyists from different sides will literally be pitted directly against one another, and it won’t be pretty. In fact, one analyst that works for Cowen Washington Research Group says that we could soon be watching “the corporate hunger games”…

Almost every industry, special interest, and consumer group has an interest in the tax code, especially if the package ends up being as ambitious as Trump and Republican leaders want it to be. Chris Krueger, an analyst at Cowen Washington Research Group, told Business Insider that the battle over which loopholes to keep and which to throw out could get nasty.

“Welcome tribunes to the corporate hunger games!” Kruger said in an email. “Only one-sixth of lobbyists were involved with health care (give or take — assuming it is one-sixth of economy). Six-sixths of lobbyists are involved in taxes.”

There is so much at stake, and if the Republicans are able to get something passed it probably won’t look much like the plan that Trump originally proposed. But it is so important to do something, because today Americans spend more on taxes than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined. That is morally wrong, and we desperately need tax relief.

Trump’s tax plan would nearly double the standard deduction, and that would be a wonderful thing. It would provide instant tax relief to working class Americans, and that is something that I would greatly applaud.

Trump’s tax plan would also great reduce the tax rate for corporations. Our big corporations certainly don’t need the help, but we do want to get our rate more in line with the rest of the planet. Because our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world, it actually encourages companies to set up shop some place else. Being more competitive with the rest of the world would likely mean more jobs for the American people.

Trump’s tax plan would also reduce the number of tax brackets for individuals. Instead of seven, now there would just be three tax brackets of 12 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent. To me, those rates are way too high, but of course I would like to eliminate the individual income tax entirely.

Many are criticizing Trump’s plan for proposing to raise at least a trillion dollars over the next decade by getting rid of the deduction for state and local income taxes. For those that live in very high tax states such as California, that deduction is a really big deal…

High-income Californians, for instance, pay as much as 13.3 per cent of their income to the state in addition to their federal taxes. New Yorkers can pay up to 8.82 per cent.

Just seven U.S. states have no personal income taxes, including Texas, Florida and Nevada.

Hopefully the Republicans can pass some sort of tax reform in the short-term, because the status quo is definitely not acceptable.

When the income tax was first introduced in 1913, the vast majority of taxpayers were being taxed at a rate of just one percent. The following comes from Politifact…

The 1913 law imposed a tax of 1 percent on income up to $20,000, for both individual and joint filers. However, exemptions from the tax — the first $3,000 of income for individuals and the first $4,000 for joint filers — meant “virtually all middle-class Americans” were excused from paying, according to W. Elliot Brownlee’s book, Federal Taxation in America. The law also put in place a graduated surtax on incomes above $20,000; the highest rate paid, 7 percent, applied to Americans making more than $500,000 (about $11.4 million in 2011 dollars).

Today, Americans are being taxed into oblivion. It has been reported that we spend more than 6 billion hours a year on our taxes, and I once wrote an article detailing 97 different ways that various levels of government extract revenue from all of us.

Every year government just gets bigger and bigger on the federal, state and local levels. And the bigger government gets, the more oppressive it tends to become.

Personally, I would love to start starving the beast that the left has created, and a great way to do that would be to completely eliminate the federal income tax.

A lot of people could not even imagine a world without a federal income tax. But the truth is that our country once thrived under such a system. In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was between 1872 and 1913 when there was no income tax at all.

And we could do it again. Today, the individual income tax only accounts for about 46 percent of all federal revenue, and if we reduced the federal government to a size that our founders would have wanted, we would be more than okay.

But even if we can’t greatly reduce the size of the federal government in the short-term, we can at least go to a very basic flat tax or a fair tax, and both of those systems would be far superior to what we have today.

If we can’t get a flat tax or a fair tax right now, we should at least try to dramatically reduce tax rates and simplify the tax code as much as humanly possible.

But if we do get a short-term victory, the battle is definitely not over. In the long-term, we need to be very clear that our goal should be to abolish the income tax, the IRS and the Federal Reserve entirely. Anything short of that is not good enough.

At this time of the year, millions of Americans are rushing to file their taxes at the last minute, and we are once again reminded just how nightmarish our system of taxation has become. I studied tax law when I was in law school, and it is one of the most mind-numbing areas of study that you could possibly imagine. At this point, the U.S. tax code is somewhere around 4 million words long, which is more than four times longer than all of William Shakespeare’s works put together. And even if you could somehow read the entire tax code, it is constantly changing, and so those that prepare taxes for a living are constantly relearning the rules. It has been said that Americans spend more than 6 billion hours preparing their taxes each year, and Politifact has rated this claim as true. We have a system that is as ridiculous as it is absurd, and the truth is that we don’t even need it. In fact, the greatest period of economic growth in all of U.S. history was when there was no income tax at all. Why anyone would want to perpetuate this tortuous system is beyond me, and yet we keep sending politicians to Washington D.C. that just keep making this system even more complicated and even more burdensome.

If you hate taxes, you are far from alone. According to NBC News, here are some of the things that Americans would rather do than pay taxes…

Six percent would rather sell a kidney, eight percent would rather name their first-born “Taxes,” and 11 percent would rather spend three years cleaning the bathrooms at noro-torious Chipotle.

Of course our system was never intended to be like this anyway. Our founders hated taxes, and they fought a very bitter war to escape the yoke of oppressive taxation. During his very first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson clearly expressed what he thought about taxes…

“A wise and frugal government… shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

Why couldn’t we have listened to him?

When the federal income tax was originally introduced a little more than a century ago, most Americans were taxed at a rate of only 1 percent.

But of course once they get their feet in the door, the social planners always want more, and today we are being taxed into oblivion. Below, I would like to share with you three quick facts about our taxes that come from the Tax Foundation…

-This year, Tax Freedom Day falls on April 24, or 114 days into the year (excluding Leap Day).

-Americans will pay $3.3 trillion in federal taxes and $1.6 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total bill of almost $5.0 trillion, or 31 percent of the nation’s income.

-Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2016 than they will on food, clothing, and housing combined.

That last statistic is a huge sore point with me.

How can anyone argue that we are not a socialist society when the government takes more of our money than we spend on food, clothing and housing combined?

What they are doing to us is deeply wrong and it is fundamentally un-American.

And of course the elite have the resources to be able to hire very expensive tax attorneys that help them manipulate the game in their favor. At the end of the day, many extremely wealthy Americans end up paying a much lower percentage of their income to the government than you or I do.

The Clintons and their family foundation have at least five shell companies registered to the address 1209 North Orange Street in Wilmington, Delaware — which is also home to some 280,000 other companies who use the location to take advantage of the state’s low taxes, limited disclosure requirements, and other business incentives.

Two of the five are tied to Bill and Hillary Clinton specifically. One, WJC, LLC, is used by the former president to collect his consulting fees. The other, ZFS Holdings, LLC, was used by the former secretary of state to process her $5.5 million book advance from Simon & Schuster. Three additional shell companies belong to the Clinton Foundation.

One could argue that they are simply “playing the game”, but why do we have to play such a complicated game in the first place?

Another thing that frustrates me is how our tax money is being wasted. Speaking of the Clintons, did you know that Bill Clinton still receives close to a million dollars from the federal government every year? Since he left office in 2001, he has been given approximately 16 million of our tax dollars.

Our system is deeply, deeply broken, but I am under no illusion that it will change any time soon. It will probably just continue to roll along until it eventually collapses under its own weight.

And of course it isn’t just income taxes that I am talking about. Our politicians have become masters at inventing ways to extract money from all of us. If you doubt this, just look at the list that I have shared below. It comes from my previous article entitled “A List Of 97 Taxes Americans Pay Every Year“, and it shows how the politicians are squeezing money out of us in just about every way that you can imagine…

#1 Air Transportation Taxes (just look at how much you were charged the last time you flew)

#2 Biodiesel Fuel Taxes

#3 Building Permit Taxes

#4 Business Registration Fees

#5 Capital Gains Taxes

#6 Cigarette Taxes

#7 Court Fines (indirect taxes)

#8 Disposal Fees

#9 Dog License Taxes

#10 Drivers License Fees (another form of taxation)

#11 Employer Health Insurance Mandate Tax

#12 Employer Medicare Taxes

#13 Employer Social Security Taxes

#14 Environmental Fees

#15 Estate Taxes

#16 Excise Taxes On Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans

#17 Federal Corporate Taxes

#18 Federal Income Taxes

#19 Federal Unemployment Taxes

#20 Fishing License Taxes

#21 Flush Taxes (yes, this actually exists in some areas)

#22 Food And Beverage License Fees

#23 Franchise Business Taxes

#24 Garbage Taxes

#25 Gasoline Taxes

#26 Gift Taxes

#27 Gun Ownership Permits

#28 Hazardous Material Disposal Fees

#29 Highway Access Fees

#30 Hotel Taxes (these are becoming quite large in some areas)

#31 Hunting License Taxes

#32 Import Taxes

#33 Individual Health Insurance Mandate Taxes

#34 Inheritance Taxes

#35 Insect Control Hazardous Materials Licenses

#36 Inspection Fees

#37 Insurance Premium Taxes

#38 Interstate User Diesel Fuel Taxes

#39 Inventory Taxes

#40 IRA Early Withdrawal Taxes

#41 IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)

#42 IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)

#43 Library Taxes

#44 License Plate Fees

#45 Liquor Taxes

#46 Local Corporate Taxes

#47 Local Income Taxes

#48 Local School Taxes

#49 Local Unemployment Taxes

#50 Luxury Taxes

#51 Marriage License Taxes

#52 Medicare Taxes

#53 Medicare Tax Surcharge On High Earning Americans Under Obamacare

#54 Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (if you don’t buy “qualifying” health insurance under Obamacare you will have to pay an additional tax)

#55 Obamacare Surtax On Investment Income (a new 3.8% surtax on investment income)

#56 Parking Meters

#57 Passport Fees

#58 Professional Licenses And Fees (another form of taxation)

#59 Property Taxes

#60 Real Estate Taxes

#61 Recreational Vehicle Taxes

#62 Registration Fees For New Businesses

#63 Toll Booth Taxes

#64 Sales Taxes

#65 Self-Employment Taxes

#66 Sewer & Water Taxes

#67 School Taxes

#68 Septic Permit Taxes

#69 Service Charge Taxes

#70 Social Security Taxes

#71 Special Assessments For Road Repairs Or Construction

#72 Sports Stadium Taxes

#73 State Corporate Taxes

#74 State Income Taxes

#75 State Park Entrance Fees

#76 State Unemployment Taxes (SUTA)

#77 Tanning Taxes (a new Obamacare tax on tanning services)

#78 Telephone 911 Service Taxes

#79 Telephone Federal Excise Taxes

#80 Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Taxes

#81 Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Taxes

#82 Telephone State And Local Taxes

#83 Telephone Universal Access Taxes

#84 The Alternative Minimum Tax

#85 Tire Recycling Fees

#86 Tire Taxes

#87 Tolls (another form of taxation)

#88 Traffic Fines (indirect taxation)

#89 Use Taxes (Out of state purchases, etc.)

#90 Utility Taxes

#91 Vehicle Registration Taxes

#92 Waste Management Taxes

#93 Water Rights Fees

#94 Watercraft Registration & Licensing Fees

#95 Well Permit Fees

#96 Workers Compensation Taxes

#97 Zoning Permit Fees

So after reading all of this, are you still satisfied with how our present system operates?

Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

If you have a farm or a small business, would you like to pass it on to your children when you die? Well, unless Congress does something, it is going to become much, much harder to do that starting next year. Right now, there is a 5 million dollar estate tax exemption and anything above that is taxed at 35 percent. But on January 1st, the exemption will go down to 1 million dollars and the tax rate will go up to 55 percent. A lot of liberals are very excited about this, because they believe that the government will be soaking wealthy people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. But the truth is that a lot of farms, ranches and small businesses will be absolutely devastated by this change in the tax law. There are many farmers and ranchers out there today that do not make much money but are sitting on tracts of land that are worth millions of dollars. According to the American Farm Bureau, approximately 97 percent of all farms and ranches in the United States would be subject to the estate tax if the exemption was reduced to just a million dollars. That means that the children of these farmers and ranchers would be faced with a very cruel choice when it is time to inherit these farms and ranches. Either they come up with enough money to pay the government about half of what the farm or ranch is worth, or they sell the farm or ranch that may have been in their family for generations. Needless to say, most farm and ranch families do not have that kind of cash lying around. Most of them are just barely making it from year to year. So this change in the tax law is going to greatly accelerate the death of the family farm in America. This is also going to devastate many family-owned small businesses. Many small businesses don’t make much money, but they have buildings or land or assets worth millions of dollars. Children that may have wanted to continue the family legacy will be forced to sell because of the massive tax bill that they get from Uncle Sam. This is an insidious cruelty, and it shows just how broken our system has become.

The desire to leave the wealth that you have worked so hard to accumulate all your life to your children is something that is common to virtually all human societies. We want to know that future generations will be taken care of.

It is simply immoral for the federal government to swoop in and tax farms, ranches and small businesses that were intended to be passed down from parents to their children at a 55 percent tax rate.

A lot of the people that are going to be affected by this change are not “wealthy” at all. A recent Fox News report examined what this change in the law is going to mean for rancher Kevin Kester and his family…

Rancher Kevin Kester works dawn to dusk, drives a 12-year-old pick-up truck and earns less than a typical bureaucrat in Washington D.C., yet the federal government considers him rich enough to pay the estate tax — also known as the “death tax.”

Kester told Fox News that he has no doubt that his ranch will have to be sold when he dies just to pay the tax bill…

“There is no way financially my kids can pay what the IRS is going to demand from them nine months after death and keep this ranch intact for their generation and future generations,” said Kester, of the Bear Valley Ranch in Central California.

Two decades ago, Kester paid the IRS $2 million when he inherited a 22,000-acre cattle ranch from his grandfather. Come January, the tax burden on his children will be more than $13 million.

Reading that should make you angry. Every single year, thousands upon thousands of farms, ranches and small businesses are going to be lost to the federal tax monster.

It is almost as if the federal government does not want income-producing assets to remain in the hands of the “little guy”.

What in the world are we supposed to do?

It isn’t as if all of those farmers and ranchers can go off to the big cities and find good jobs. As I wrote about yesterday, our politicians are standing aside as millions of our good jobs are shipped out of the country.

The cold, hard truth is that our system does not work for average Americans any longer. Those that roll out of bed every morning, work hard and never complain always seem to get the short end of the stick.

The people that are the backbone of America are the ones that the government is always the hardest on.

Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point where the government is searching for more “revenue” from anywhere it can because it desperately needs more money. U.S. government finances are a complete and total mess and we are drowning in the biggest ocean of debt the world has ever seen.

Middle class Americans are already hit with dozens of different taxes each year, and you can be certain that our politicians will continue to invent ways to extract even more “revenue” out of us.

And of course our politicians will never stop their wild spending. Despite all of the negotiations that have taken place over the past couple of years, our spending problems just continue to grow. For example, the federal budget deficit for the month of October was $120 billion, which was more than 20 percent larger than the federal budget deficit for October 2011 was.

So what is the solution?

Well, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner now says that he wants to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely. He says that we should just have no limit and that the federal government should just be able to go into debt as much as it wants.

In the end, all of this debt is going to absolutely crush us. We have literally destroyed the future of America, and yet most of the country still seems clueless about all of this. The blind are leading the blind, and we are headed straight for complete and utter disaster.

One day, when people look back on this period in American history, what do you think people are going to say about us?